This is part of the series of articles which will be posting how China rising herself up from a poverty stricken weak nation to a wealthy super power nation.

Founding A Communist Nation

On 1st October 1949, Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Under Mao’s leadership, previously landless peasants were given land to farm and landowners became dispossessed. In 1954, Communist Party ordered a gradual dismantling of the household-based economy, individual properties were merged into larger entities that were collectively managed and cultivated. Similarly, in the cities entire industry and commerce sectors were almost nationalized. Mao’s 1958 ‘Great Leap Forward’ failed campaign resulted in a disastrous country-wide hunger. The Great Chinese famine claimed the lives of more than 20 million Chinese, who died between 1959 and 1961. With China becoming one of the most poor economies in the world Mao’s plan was abandoned in 1961.

Reformist Pragmatic Leaders

In 1978, and after Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping became the paramount Leader of China who was a chief architect of the ‘reform and opening-up policy’. He officially launched the ‘Four Modernizations’ (agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense), and formally marked China’s reform era. A pragmatist, Deng gave to China its political and economic stability. Since 1979 China has become an open economy and the reforms lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. Moving full speed ahead into industrialization and changing people’s perceptions and thinking was a major task. Attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and investing in physical capital ensued in the 1990s.